zerodraft

Small-world model: Also known as “the six degrees of separation,” this model explains the ways in which networks manifest redundancy or clustering, and that in spite of this clustering, networks still are able to connect individual nodes that are seemingly disconnected. Duncan Watts explains, “[t]he claim of the small-world phenomenon…states that I can get a message to anyone, even if they have absolutely nothing in common with me at all” (41). As sociologist Granovetter found in the 70s, it is often the connections made across clusters that are the most useful: “Paradoxically,…it is not your close friends who are of most use to you. Because they know many of the same people you do, and may often be exposed to similar information, they are rarely the ones who can help you leap into a new environment…it tends to be the casual acquaintances who are the useful ones because they can give you information you would never otherwise have received” (Watts 49). The connections across clusters are called weak ties (Granovetter).

Hubs and Connectors: Barabasi found that his work with the network of the World Wide Web did not always lend itself neatly to the combined small-world model/random graph theory that Watts and Strogatz developed. That is, the mathematics that drives the small-word/random graph theory constructs (or assumes) “a deeply egalitarian society, whose links are ruled by the throw of a dice” (Barabasi 54). In stark contrast, Barabasi’s research explodes the commonly held notion that the Web as a network is highly democratic. Essentially, Barabasi claims that the Web is NOT classless: “[t]he most intriguing result of our Web-mapping project was the complete absence of democracy, fairness, and egalitarian values on the Web” (56). Essentially, the Web is made up of a handful of “connectors,” which are exceptionally well-connected by countless incoming links, and an innumerable number of nodes that garner only a handful of incoming links. This fits nicely in with Pareto’s Law or the 80/20 rule, since 80 percent of the links on the Web only go to 15 percent of the pages (66).

Posted by madeline at 11:28 AM | Permalink

Oh, the sadness of disorganized bookshelves and the irrepresible urge to box untidy-looking books and put them in the attic! After yesterday's post, I realized that nobody-but-nobody should be talking about social capital without a nice dollop of Pierre Bourdieu for good measure.

But I can't find my _Language and Symbolic Power_ to save my life. Ugh. I must have ferreted it away... so I'll have to work from memory. But back to Putnam first.* He traces the first use of the phrase "social capital" to a man from, where else, good old West Virginia. This guy, L.J. Hanifan (state supervisor of rural schools at the time--1916) argued that connections and cooperationbetween neighbors might improve inividual students' chances at succeeding in school. Apparently, then, a whole slew of other scholars, in fields such as economics and sociology, took up the term independently at different parts of the 19th Century (Putnam 19).

What strikes me, here, when I consider social capital within the context network literacy, is that I have the inclination to somehow attribute network literacy to the explicit understanding and use of social capital. That is, much in the same way Bourdieu's work meant to uncover the unspoken structures in culture that dictated who has power and how that power is enacted, I'm driven to think about network literacy as being directly related to--or the result of--similar understanding about social capital, for instance: who *has* social capital, how it works, how it might be cultivated and maintained.

An easy example of the overt understanding of social capital might be the ways in which bloggers learn quickly that in order to get readers, a blogger must first be a reader and responder himself, making connections outward by leaving comments and trackbacks to other bloggers.

The problem with looking at network literacy simply as a function of one's ability to gauge and create social capital is that it reduces network literacy to what Selber (and Banks) would call "functional literacy." In other words, saying network literacy is simply social literacy via internet and software connections ignores those meta-moves that users make, doesn't allow for users to subvert conventions of social literacy, to make changes to the conventions, or to understand (and manipulate) the ways in which their actions shape and inform the network itself (these latter understandings might be filed under Selber's "critical literacy").

On the other hand, to understand and use essentially unacknowledged-yet-firmly-entrenched conventions indicates that a meta-understanding...

But not always, especially if we look at network operations in terms of symbolic power, in that understanding and using conventions doesn't always involve the ability to "buck the groove" as it were.

*sigh* I think this constitutes a paragraph. I have to go make pie.

*should have put this in the last post
Putnam, Robert D. _Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community._ New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000.

Posted by madeline at 08:31 AM | Permalink

(paragraph-per-day project)
(also: evidence of how much I can "get done" in one hour--not so much!)

This project will draw on texts that involve research in network studies, which emerges from disciplines ranging from anthropology, social science, and information science. Also, I’ll draw heavily from the field of rhetoric and technology, specifically those scholars and texts that deal with technology and literacy.

Key Terms:

Social capital: In Putnam: “I’ll do for you if you do for me” (20). See also reciprocity. Putnam offers two levels of social capital: bonding social capital, which creates exclusivity; and bridging social capital, which connects outward or creates inclusivity (22). Bonding social capital is created by “homogenous groups” such as ethnic fraternities or country clubs (22). Bridging connections “are outward looking and encompass people across diverse social cleavages” like the civil rights movement (22). “To build bridging social capital requires that we transcend our social and political and professional identities to connect with people unlike ourselves” (411). “No sector of American society will have more influence on the future state of our social capital than the electronic mass media and especially the Internet…Let us foster new forms of electronic entertainment and communication that reinforce community rather than forestalling it” (410). Putnam’s concern is that “virtual community” is not as good as “real” or “face-to-face” community. His call is for us as a nation to return to making the civic connections of yesteryear, but that we must find ways that Internet technology can support the rebuilding of conventional communities (“place-based, face-to-face, enduring social networks” [411]) rather than replace them. Putnam would be pleased to find that blogging has already fostered these sorts of conventional networks. For instance BlogHer, originally a multi-authored Typepad blog [include history here from Elisa’s response], has evolved into a sizeable community of women writers who attend the yearly Blogher conference. The BlogHer conference is as much about seminars about feminism and workshops on using Photoshop as it is about reinforcing the virtual into the place-based. Another example of blog networks evolving (or succumbing?) to IRL meetings is that of the Chicago RBFers. The RBF (or “Running Blog Family”) is supported by completerunning.com, a site dedicated to issues of running and racing. Any blogger can join request his blog be added to the list (which numbers 1023 at the time of this writing). In the summer of 2006, a group of RBFers based in Chicago began monthly meet-ups at local eateries.

Posted by madeline at 10:29 PM | Permalink